Chris and Karens Space

Bones aching from the previous day's bike ride, well bike pushing, we had a late breakfast and made our way to Jasper Library and the dreaded internet which one seems not to be able to live without these days.  Since arriving in Canada and the Rockies in particular internet access is limited unless you go to the local library in the nearest town which is possibly sixty/seventy miles away. Saying all that once you enter the Rockies unless you have a satalite phone, forget mobile phone calls, as for land lines errrrr.... forget it. So we arrive at the library and purchase our one hour internet time.  Anywhere else in the country library internet access was free not in the Rockies though, time to milk the tourist.  Good tip though purchase your hour, when your hour is up with your battery fully charged on your laptop go outside and continue using the signal outside on the lovely bench over looking the  town, valley and the surrounding mountains of the Rockies at no charge until the battery dies, but be warned do not get caught by the librarian, she'll smack the back of your legs, on that sudject don't use Skype inside the library either my ears are still ringing all this time later because of the b******ing I received from her, Skype, mobile phones no difference to her.  There are some bars/restruants that offer free internet access but after 2 pints writting and reading e-mails one loses interest and Skype is not so good, but parking the car outside works. 

Well internet done, sun shinning with white puffy clouds floating by thousands of feet above us we make our way out of Jasper heading in to British Columbia on the Yellow Head Highway (Trans Canadian 16) which sounds miles but it not, it's just down the road.

Arriving across the boarder there's the tourist information centre, lots of brochures for BC including ones for Vancouver Island with ferry timetables costings are a little vauge though, infact non existant.  After chatting with this lovely young lady asking about the area advising us to take the trail up beside the Mount Robson or to have a look at the Overlander Falls.  Questioning her about wildlife and bears, well we are in bear country, she suggested travelling alittle way down the 16 until you get to the layby stop and watch and in the trees, if you are lucky maybe just maybe you may see mummy and two cubs, she had to stop and let them cross the road that morning and that was not the first time she had seen them.  So armed with this information we remove the bikes and set off up the trail in the direction of Mount Robson, after yesterday you would have thought we would have learnt our lesson.  We rode for a mile, mile and a half then pushed them, another little ride before pushing them somemore, you can see where the name mountain biking comes from, about two and a half miles in the rain started and the deceision was made to return to the car.  At this point it would be good to tell you about the river which was crashing down the valley the noise was unbelievable racing towards the sea, before the circle starts again.  Back at the car bikes aboard we travelled to the layby as suggested and we stopped not getting out of the car we looked into the trees.  How can something as large as a bear live in a tree and be invisable? Then out of the corner of our eye there's mother crossing the road and into the undergrowth probably 100 metres down the road and never to be seen by ouselves again, but we got a glimse, no photos just a glimse.  We waited a while but she's gone, how does Sir David Attenbourgh get those pictures and so close? What a job I'd pay to do that.  Making our way back we stopped at Overlander Falls a short walk off the highway into the trees/forest making lots of noise just to keep the bears at a safe distance, no objections to seeing a bear, two or three but at a safe distance would be nice.  Once again watching the river chasing and crashing down through the valley, carving it's path, wearing rocks ripping out trees and anything else in it's path on it's way to the ocean, the noise deafening white water as walls of water crash over the rocks, Canada what a country, can only say, ''what a country, go and see for yourself''.     

Well it's months since we have had good internet excess so the blog gets futher and futher behind and when we do get internet access it's time to clear all our e-mails that have come from all our friends including those lovely people in HMR&C. That is Her Majersty Revenue & Customs, (that's the new name for the taxman, somebody got paid thousand of pounds to organise the new department, organise that's a joke!) well these people don't seem to understand plain English, verbal or written.  Before we left we informed these people and departments saying we are off, new address is and just to make sure it's correct the accountant informs them too, at our expence of course. Two years on we are still getting tax demands, which said accountant informs the HMR&C it's wrong, but the computers send the next one and on and on it goes. The point behind this moaning is to explain why the blog is almost twelve months behind. So if the HMR&C read this please stop sending me bills as we owe you nothing but please send the cheque you owe us asap as it's better in our account than in yours, Gordon and Alister will only waste it. As neither us are working and the interest from money in the bank is not worth a toffee and as for our shares well Andrex is worth more.

Well done Tony you can't have done it without Gordon!

Gordon's now got Alister, but that's not for long Rats and Sinking Ships and all that. Was he pushed or did he jump.

It's on days like today we remember why we left the UK.

More Tomorrow. CNK 

 

Today see us in our new home in Cyprus and we will be here until 25th June before we return to England and the coach which is in Cornwall at Itchyfeet, but of that later. So from memory we will be bringing this blog up to date hopefully before we return to good old Blitty 

The idea behind revisiting the Rocky Mountains after dropping Brian off at Edmonton was to get closer to the surroundings rather than doing the American touristy thing, drive, look, take that photo, get back in the car, truck, camper whatever and disappear to the next scenic view, we wanted to walk, cycle or ramble, to be able to get away from the roads not necessarily away from people because remembering the warning about bears the more people in theory the more chance of safety, not forgetting our "bear bells" the ones still in Wal-mart, that's the ones we haven't bought yet oops.  Arriving at the Pyramid Lake we park the car, not so many people about but just one or two, we take the bikes from the car and proceed around the lake, obviously this is a little off the normal tourist trail as there are no Asians or Far Eastern people and there don't seem to be many Americans either, just a few fellow Brits and our Canadian cousins.  The vastness of Canada is hard to come to terms with for someone who comes from such a small country like Britain with almost double the population and such a small landmass. Here we are surrounded by mountains and lakes and all but nobody here and this the height of summer, but no more than 5 or 6 miles there's the hustle and bustle of Jasper, enjoyable!  Riding around the lake it was beautiful but almost like any other lake we had encountered in Canada flat calm like a mirror, with clear water and surrounded by towering mountains some with snow covered peaks.  Arriving at the point where the road and pathway finished we decided to take the Palisades Fire road, that's the road used for access to the back country in case of fires. What the fire boys and girls would be going to do once up there with no water I have no idea other than try and cut a fire break, answers on a postcard to the "Wondering Stephenson's somewhere in the northern hemisphere".  Well the track was made for fire vehicles and large vehicles at that. The trail was an easy ride for the first couple of miles, a little up and a little down followed by a flat bit then up some more uphill this time a tad steeper this makes you puff, until ones little legs give out now we are walking, well we are climbing up the trail as the trail steepens.  We started out at 12.30 along this trail at about 3.00 we met a couple coming down the trail, we stopped for a chat and they suggest we left the bikes where the trail splits as there was no way we could ride them beyond that point, the truth of the matter we pushed them almost all the way to that point from where we were talking to them.  Crazy as it may seem here we are halfway up a mountain with nothing to see except the trees, bushes and the other vegetation with the sky above the odd view across the valley and the other mountain peaks in the distance at some points the trees formed a tunnel it had been a long time since a fire truck had been up this trail.  The couple had told us we had another hour and half to the top and it was getting to the point would we make it because we, especially myself were struggling huffing and puffing but they also told us that the view was well worth it.  Darkness was not going to be a problem but the weather could be as it was starting to close in the black clouds coming over the mountain tops with the odd crack of thunder this could be interesting. The breaks in our walking were becoming almost as long as the walking itself, sitting/resting on anything we could find.  We made it to where the trail spilt and at that point we left the bikes it won't be long now this was 3.30 and set off on foot, well we had been on foot since probably two o'clock, the trail now became even steeper and getting a fire truck up this trail was not going to happen.  The vegetation was changing as we climbed the mountain, the trees were thinning and with each step we made our way up to the next switch back, the next corner would be the last one, wrong, if we had a pound for every time we said that we could have bought another house in Cyprus, but then, around about 5.00 we had made it, round the last switchback and we were there standing on the edge of the viewing point looking over the Athabasca Valley, the Athabasca River below looking no more than a stream, looking at the Trans Canadian Highway 16 with the little matchbox cars and lorries trundling along even a freight train slowly coming out of Jasper looking nothing more than a big boys toy.  Standing taking in the mountains all around us and with the valley below with the sun trying to get through the clouds all that was left was the journey back down and it had taken four and a half hours up to now we hadn't even packed a drink or food never mind coats. It was time once more for best foot forward and we set off this time going down and with the odd spot of rain we are not going to take our time.  Going down was much easier than the climb up the only problem was you are almost running because of the gradient and keeping a good footing at that pace was not that easy, what took an hour and a half to walk up took 30 minutes to go down and back at the bikes, fortunately no bears have stolen them, we are off so this is what they call "mountain biking" hells teeth this is a little different from cycling around the cycle paths of Canada and America.  Well if there are any bears here they'll have no chance keeping up with us as we go down the trail.  To this date we have no idea what the altitude was of where we had been that day but it was 6.9 miles up and 6.9 miles down.  It took 30 minutes to get back to the car briefly stopping at a hotel for a bottle of pop before heading back for a well earned tea followed by a large amount of Zs.             

There always seems to be another job to do, if it's not washing or polishing the coach or car it's mending a puncture on the bike, today was no exception, this time it's the puncture on the bike and having mended it we set off.  We are on our way to Maligne Canyon.  We follow the well trodden path following the Maligne River as it crashes it's way down carving it's way through rocks and creating a canyon over many centuries. The canyon that has been created by the force of the water has left behind strange shapes, pools and even tunnels where the softer rock has given way under the relentless rushing of the water especially in the spring and the thaw.  The rock face of the canyon towering high in the sky with huge trees growing from almost impossible places hanging on to what seems to be nothing.  Canada seems to be the land of extreme sports or just people who like to live on the edge.  Who else would camp in a tent in an area that's bear country with bear warnings everywhere, in fact you are recommended to go in groups of 3 or more and carry bells (known as bear bells) so as you walk the bell jingles allowing the bear or bears to leave the area and knowing our luck the bear would have enough time to lay the table with a fresh table cloth and be sat waiting for us licking it's lips.  Anyway through the raging river comes some idiot in a wet suit with helmet closely followed by another and another lastly the TV presenter who had to be blond in a wet suit has followed these nutters to report on the latest craze. Climbing gingerly she made her way to the bank with cameraman perched on a nearby rock getting his shot, removing the helmet and shaking the blond hair with microphone now in her hand she begins to interview these raving nutters.  Jumping into a fast flowing ice cold river in a wet suit because you can, not for us we will keep walking along the river bank just like any other normal human being. After walking along the canyon we make our way to Medicine Lake which still had water in it but is supposed to run dry during summer draining through a series of underground rivers which have been carved through the rock below the lake bottom over time. Eventually we made it to Maligne Lake but by this time the sun was low in the sky and starting to go behind the mountains although it would be about another 3 hours before it was dark so we started the journey back to the coach.  When we had got up at the campground this morning we had had the pleasant pleasure of seeing a herd of deer, if that's the correct wording, grazing their way through the campground.  As we made our way back there for supper there was a Caribou grazing by the roadside with no fear of humans he sat down (see the photo's, he's a he) on the grass verge by the road to chew the cud.  What a wonderful country Canada is turning out to be.

Your going to get no more tonight so until the next installment it's goodnight from her and goodnight from me. Later CNK